Descendientes de J. Palacios SL
Moncerbal
Bierzo
2019

The producer

Descendientes de Jose Palacios was founded in 1998 by Alvaro Palacios, cult Spanish winemaker of Priorat fame, and his nephew Ricardo Perez Palacios. In fact, the arrival of Palacios in 1998 is often ascribed as the reason why the Bierzo region suddenly saw huge interest and popularity and today is one of the country’s rising stars.

The estate is located in the village of Villafranca del Bierzo and was named in honour of Alvaro’s father who passed away in 2000. All wines have a portion of Mencia in them and are to a smaller or larger extent blended with a portion of indigenous grapes. Villa de Corullon is the flagship and a single village wine sourced from the best sites in the Corullon village; Petalos is an old vine blend; and finally there are three single vineyards of which we carry Las Lamas and Moncerbal.

The wine

Descendientes de J. Palacios produce three famous single vineyard wines, of which Moncerbal is one. Moncerbal is a 1.51-hectare vineyard in the Corullon village and the wine if fermented in oak vats, followed by 11 months ageing in a combination of used barrels and foudres. Only around 3,000 bottles are produces in each vintage.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.